We all have two selves. One is real, the other is made up.
The bigger the distance between the two, the less authentic, the less happy we are.
When you love yourself: you love your life… said in another way: when the two selves are in harmony, you love your life.
The soul’s (the real self) job is to cause character, the soul’s job is to help you find out who you are. The Self. The person you are…
Many of you have not managed to distinguish a Self from all the ideas of who you should be, who you want to be, who you fancy yourself being… The precious I, the delusional self.
A Self is your ‘I’ that is independent and defensible from other people’s opinion, and from even your own opinion of you… when you make mistakes.
I know this is a mouthful, so let me elaborate:
First aspect of a strong self: You have a strong Self, and someone says you are stupid, or you are brilliant… and your Self doesn’t get shaken up by that. Doesn’t feel attacked. The self is not defined by what someone says, including yourself.
Second aspect of a strong self: you about you: you make a mistake. You call yourself stupid or clumsy, or a loser. And it doesn’t even begin to touch your Self: your Self is impervious to the adjectives anyone throws at it. 1
This level of Self is rare. You have to get to it, work your way to it.
You can measure your distance from having a Self by how much you crave to be well-thought of… how you do things just to avoid the non-physical pain of someone saying something about you, or to you.
So how do you get to that impervious Self?
I am asking this question of myself… How did I do it?
I could say ‘I don’t know,’ but it’s actually a lie. I know. I know exactly. And here it is:
I went back in my personal history, and looked at acts that defines me.
I have found several… Here is one:
Who I am is that 13 year old earning that guitar.
I had been playing the violin. I had wanted to play the piano, but we didn’t have enough money to get a piano. So I played the violin.
I didn’t like the violin. You have to do it well to sound good, and I didn’t. I didn’t like my violin teacher either. She smelled bad and had yellow fingertips. I fought back disgust every time I wen to my violin lesson.
I heard someone play the guitar and I knew I wanted that.
Returning from one of his trips, my father came back with a custom built guitar. He showed it to me, allowed me to touch it, and then locked it into his closet.
‘You can have it when you get an A in violin.’
That was very clear. I knew where the guitar was, all I had to do is earn it.
So I started practicing in earnest. This was in March. I practiced every day for 4-5 hours… that is how far I was from getting to an A level…
By the middle of summer people stopped in the street to hear my violin. By August I even liked the sound that came out of the violin. At the end of August I got an A. And in September I started to take guitar lessons.
On the surface this is too personal a story to teach anyone anything
But if I break it up to you, with my awareness of today, you’ll see that it was built on simple distinctions, plus a decision, a decision made by me… and that decision is who I am today. My Self.
OK, let’s see:
- Element 1: My father didn’t just promise me a guitar, he put his ass on the line, and actually got me a guitar.This is very important. It wasn’t an out there, maybe, one day some day, maybe, I hope, out of reach dream, like most of what you have. I want to be a millionaire, a billionaire, a successful business owner, blah blah blah. My goal was something that was in the bag already, it was touchable, and I could reach it.I knew that it would have been reasonable to take 2-3 years to earn it… I was really bad at the violin, especially my muscle strength… You have to be both precise and strong… And I was neither.But I could get good at it. I had good ear for music, and I had the will.
It was within reach. My father knew it, and therefore I knew it. His action told me… he didn’t. - Element 2: What I said… what I said is what is the definition of Self.
I said that I would never let a gift, someone’s generosity, someone’s investment in me, someone’s trust in me, go wasted.
There is nothing worse than that, and I will never be caught doing that to another person. Now, the orienting feeling, the guiding feeling, the strategic feeling that is working here is a need based feeling: meeting another’s expectation of me. You believe I can do it? You are willing to bet on it? You are willing to put YOUR ASS on the line that I can and will do it? OK, deal. I am game. And then, however painful it is, I’ll deliver.
That is who I am. This is the only thing you need to know about me. This is what has guided everything. Including my relationship with Source.
You believe I can do it? You are willing to bet on it? You are willing to put YOUR ASS on the line that I can and will do it? OK, deal. I am game.
With my students and my customers: You believe I can do it? You are willing to bet on it? You are willing to put YOUR ASS on the line that I can and will do it? OK, deal. I am game.
I have said it before, but I’ll see it again: You can tell your life-story in thousands of different ways, depending on what ‘filter’ you use.
I can tell my life story based on this one thing: hundreds of instances.
You have a tendency to tell your life story by what is done to you… bad stuff.
Or how you dropped the ball… again and again.
Or how you lost yourself…
Go back in your life and find a point where you had some character, some strength of character, and examine it.
Build your self on it… it is never too late.
Make sure it is yours… that it is not something someone else said about you. Not even what you said about you. NO, based on who you were.
Action plus an adverb.
You need to get a bigger vocabulary of adverbs.
Find the adverbs that excite you. And they may lead you to your Self… but there needs to be a core in reality.
This is NOT an intellectual exercise. You can’t think yourself to BE something… like Landmark Education teaches.
You already ARE but you have been casual about it.
Your job is to find the rock and build on it.
You don’t create the rock, you find it.
Strength of character…
A who plus a how. My how is ‘there is no way I am going to be anything less than magnificent.‘
As an aside: being who I am: that I am going to make your investment in me worthwhile for you, I have a slew of incidents where I was a disappointment.
Seriously, it is the nature of every coin to have two sides.
You can’t win them all. Some people’s expectations of you have no path, no reality, no substance to anchor yourself in.
Not everyone is as smart as my father was. He had 30 spiritual capacities… nearly all awakened and activated by himself. He knew what it took to make someone move for and achieve what they set out to achieve.
He knew that the result had to be clear and he knew that the work had to be doable.
Not like your millionaire, billionaire dreams, completely out of your reach…
- When someone says to me: I want to learn to sell. I decided on this method and I am going to get a job with a company that uses that method. I am going to learn all I can, and then we’ll see.I know to invest in this person. It is doable, and there is clarity there.
- When someone says to me: I am going to create and document a system of operations for my company, so the company can work with only some supervision and guidance by me… so I can pursue other interests… I know to bet on this person, because he can do it. It’s a lot like my violin and guitar story… just the guitar is missing… the other interest hasn’t been bought yet. And it is an important part… don’t be kidding yourself.
- When someone says to me: I have a job I don’t like but pays well. I want to make my money with my music. But I see that they don’t want to practice, I know that they don’t see an attainable goal. It is not in the bag.
Can they make money with their music? I don’t know. But there needs to be a path, with ‘milestones’ that the first of those milestones is attainable. Take one song of theirs to an audience that doesn’t already know and like them and make them love it.
- Attainable? Yes.
- With a lot of work? Yes.
- Is it worth it? Yes.
Even if you bomb… because now who you are is not some floating bum, who you are is someone who invests and verifies the dream. Who invests in yourself. Instead of talking and talking and talking, hoping that all that talking will magically make it happen.
The more you talk the less weight who you are has. The Self. You dilute it.
Don’t.
.
PS: Your soul correction and your self… there is a connection
My soul correction is ‘Forget Thyself’.
If you pay careful attention, you’ll see that in order to be the Self: I’ll make your investment worthwhile, so help me god… I am forgetting what I want, what i think, what I think I can, and wholly and fully allow the other to ‘call me up to being.’ Surrendering to what they can see me do. Becoming more, being bigger, being a whole lot bigger than I can ever imagine myself to be.
‘Forget Thyself’ is a self-limiting ego… corrected ‘Forget Thyself’ removes that ego-based limitation. Ego wants to limit… soul wants to grow.
Most of us don’t have any single person who can see for us… For my students and my clients I am that person. You surrender your ego to my vision of you and your life: you grow. You don’t… you don’t.
Want to know what your ego and your soul are fighting for? Get your soul correction reading.
.
You want a personal soul correction digging session with me? It’s $250 an hour… and I need to accept you… send me an email request AFTER you got all your Starting Point Measurements, including your TLD score. I’ll let you know…
.
I am sending you a private answer.
Sophie, I am looking into this. Having a Self is one of my big issues, so this is a rich area for me to explore.
Here’s an incident: I am 11 years old (maybe 12 or 13, not older). I tell my mother I want to go to baseball tryouts at the local sports club. The tryouts are on a Sunday. Palm Sunday for us as Greek Orthodox. Well, she reluctantly agrees, of course with much disapproval. Was that an act of character, of the assertion of a self?
In the end, I don’t think it was a defining event, because I didn’t build on it. Nor was it a fateful “break in belonging” [Landmark language] about which I made a fateful decision. Still, it was a moment, because my friend was not at home to pick me up. I was left floating, on my own, having forsaken my family and not having gained anything in the world. A deep well of emptiness. Not of Biblical proportions, but profound and frightening in that moment.
I had a few of these “standing up for my own path” moments over the years with my mother. Two of which included me being slapped in the face. Worth it.
Another time in school, age 13? A bunch of us kids sitting around thinking about putting on a show. Someone says, “If we do that that, we’ll look foolish.” I say, “I don’t care if I look like a fool!” The room goes silent. Time and space stand still. I think there was something I understood about “show biz” or the stage as a place where you are allowed to clown and fail and try things. Around this time I joined a local amateur theatre company composed of kids up to age 18.
Can I say that there is some part of my Self that can survive without the approval of others? And how can I activate the part of me that is willing to invest in myself to the point of excellence?